OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/26111/With_tablet_Microsoft_takes_aim_at_hardware_missteps
Exploring the Future of Computingen-usCopyright 2001-2017, David Adamsadam+nospam@osnews.comFri, 18 Aug 2017 05:37:36 GMThttp://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gifOSNews.comhttp://www.osnews.com
Back to the old days.http://www.osnews.com/thread?523703
http://www.osnews.com/thread?523703While I enjoy the freedom of installing the OS of choice in my computer, I miss what a computer meant back in the 80-90's.

When I talk about an Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari, Apple, etc. The name of the computer is an experience of hardware and software, made to work together.

The PC brought the freedom of hardware and software integration, and with it the bloatware and crapware that most OEM use to differentiate themselves. Something that is now spreading to the mobile world.

And lets not fool ourselves, if OEMs start selling Linuxes with their boxes, we will have HP Linux, Dell Linux, Toshiba Linux, ... .

I for one would gladly get a PC from Microsoft if it meant getting a proper integrated experience, without bloatware.

We all know about their bad practices in the industry but I doubt any MegaCorp would play nice.Mon, 25 Jun 2012 09:28:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (moondevil)CommentsMicrosoft missed the boathttp://www.osnews.com/thread?523704
http://www.osnews.com/thread?523704I'd say that it was mainly Microsoft who failed. From a consumer view, what innovation have we seen from Microsoft the past 15 years? The OS is basically the same (NT=XP=Vista=Win7). Yes, some eyecandy was added (Aero, gradients, drop shadows).

And what about the 'killer apps' Outlook and MS Office? The same lack of innovation. After 15 years living together in the suite, Word still does not recognize Excell files. The Ribbon was an innovation, but one leading to less screen real estate and more clicks. And Outlook? A slew of uninuitive menus, cripple search engine, pathetic web service (Outlook Web Exchange).

I'm not even talking about the bizar license schemes, with titles as the Consumer Ultimate Extra Student Business Server Edition 2011. And I'm not talking about language support either. OSX and Linux get this right: there is one application and then you have several language packs. But MS does this more complex: MS Office English is a different program from MS Office French. Imagine the "joys" this brings in a multi-language company.....

Then came the iPad, the iPhone. And Android phones and Android tablets. Wow! A breath of fresh air, inituitive menus, a joy to work with. Now the bulk of Windows consumers saw what OSX and Linux users had seen all along: who old and stale Windows was. Now finally MS is starting to move. Win8 is controversial, and not my cup of tea, but at last we are seeing some movement. It wasn't the hardware companies who were slow, it was MS. Remember Steve Ballmer laughing over the iPhone? "A 500 dollar phone?" Edited 2012-06-25 09:38 UTCMon, 25 Jun 2012 09:36:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (PieterGen)CommentsRE: Microsoft missed the boathttp://www.osnews.com/thread?523706
http://www.osnews.com/thread?523706

I'd say that it was mainly Microsoft who failed. From a consumer view, what innovation have we seen from Microsoft the past 15 years? The OS is basically the same (NT=XP=Vista=Win7). Yes, some eyecandy was added (Aero, gradients, drop shadows).

...and yet another person who completely disregards the fact that virtually everything - frameworks, stacks, etc. - has been rewritten or massively overhauled between XP and 7, a process that's nearing completion with Windows 8.

Come on guys, I expect comments like this on Engadget, but not here. You guys know better than this.Mon, 25 Jun 2012 09:52:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda)CommentsRE[2]: Microsoft missed the boathttp://www.osnews.com/thread?523709
http://www.osnews.com/thread?523709

Come on guys, I expect comments like this on Engadget, but not here. You guys know better than this.

Some people just love to hate Microsoft, without recognizing that all behave the same.Mon, 25 Jun 2012 10:04:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (moondevil)CommentsRE[2]: Microsoft missed the boathttp://www.osnews.com/thread?523711
http://www.osnews.com/thread?523711

Come on guys, I expect comments like this on Engadget, but not here. You guys know better than this.

Wasn't ~"Operating Systems News" more prominent in the past layout? Perhaps now, with just OSNews (is Exploring the Future of Computing), we largely have a crowd who gathered here thinking it's about open source ...so of course anything-Microsoft needs to be suppressed or ridiculed.Mon, 25 Jun 2012 10:27:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (zima)CommentsRE[2]: Microsoft missed the boathttp://www.osnews.com/thread?523713
http://www.osnews.com/thread?523713That is true.

But:

On the other hand, Microsoft did fail to offer a compelling touch-based UI for tablets, and x86 tablets were a stupid idea until the very latest 2012 intel procs. Not that you had the choice until Win8, as an ARM version of "Wintel" was unimaginable.

So Microsoft "losing faith" in its OEM is laughable: by their inability (until Metro) to create a good interface and to create an ARM version, they are the main culprits of the sorry state of Windows slates.

And now that x86 procs are, at last, good for the job, Microsoft uses its ginormous reserves of cash to jump over its OEM before they have the time to get on.

So once again, MS screws its "partners". Good luck trying to spin it otherwise.Mon, 25 Jun 2012 10:32:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (Radio)CommentsRE: Back to the old days.http://www.osnews.com/thread?523717
http://www.osnews.com/thread?523717did you meant an XBOX ? of course you can not run office on it yet Mon, 25 Jun 2012 11:04:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (dvhh)CommentsIts Microsoft's mess.http://www.osnews.com/thread?523719
http://www.osnews.com/thread?523719OEMs have always been terrible. Everyone knows that. They fucking suck at the job they do. But they've always been a vehicle for form factor diversity and reach.

Microsoft is wrong to blame them for a failed tablet when Windows 7 quite frankly wasn't up to the task of touch computing.

Those are two separate things. I think conflating the two is a mistake.

Microsoft Surface makes sense because of reason #1. OEMs in general, even with perfect conditions, fucking suck.Mon, 25 Jun 2012 11:12:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (Nelson)CommentsMicrosoft's fault?http://www.osnews.com/thread?523720
http://www.osnews.com/thread?523720I'm no fan of ms but, as far as a bad Windows experience, I'm not really sure if you can place the majority of blame on them. If you buy a Windows computer from Dell, Asus, HP, or insert-other-brand-here, what do you get? Do you get a speedy, stable Windows? Nope, you get a Windows loaded with buggy drivers, ad-ridden bloatware, and useless trialware that you either have to uninstall or wipe the os and start fresh. OEMs have made the Windows experience god awful, all in the name of earning an extra few cents from companies like Symantec, ask.com, and others. This largely contributes to the stereotype of Windows being slow and unstable. Now, Windows does have its faults and it's not my personal choice, but a non-OEM install of Windows (fresh from the Microsoft disk) is usually pretty damn fast and stable barring any hardware problems. Given that, I don't think it's really fair to blame Microsoft or say they missed the boat when their hardware partners have been turning what could have been an amazing user experience into a crapfest by installing things that nobody wants.Mon, 25 Jun 2012 11:14:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (darknexus)CommentsRE: Microsoft's fault?http://www.osnews.com/thread?523721
http://www.osnews.com/thread?523721I was talking specifically about tablets.Mon, 25 Jun 2012 11:15:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda)CommentsRE: Microsoft's fault?http://www.osnews.com/thread?523725
http://www.osnews.com/thread?523725And as I mentioned in my post, this is something OEMs will always do regardless of the OS being used.

Just look at what they are doing with Android, or did with Symbian, or the Linux distributions created for the first wave of netbooks.

They will always try to diversify somehow.Mon, 25 Jun 2012 11:31:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (moondevil)CommentsRE: Back to the old days.http://www.osnews.com/thread?523727
http://www.osnews.com/thread?523727

I for one would gladly get a PC from Microsoft if it meant getting a proper integrated experience, without bloatware.

Actually, you can.

"Many new PCs come filled with lots of trialware and sample software that slows your computer downâ"removing all that is a pain, so we do it for you! Every PC the Microsoft Store sells is put on a software diet and performance is tuned to run the best it can."

(...) they've always been a vehicle for form factor diversity and reach.

The reality is that OEMs are often the least awful option. Limit yourself to one single OEM per OS, and what you get is Apple : Don't like virtual keyboards on 3.5" screens ? Don't like to have the Inquisition decide which software is best for you ? Don't like that you have to pay hundreds of dollars to replace a friggin' laptop battery ? The answer is always "get used to it". Only a healthy OEM ecosystem can allow users to get a reasonable level of hardware and software diversity.Mon, 25 Jun 2012 12:04:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (Neolander)CommentsRE[2]: Microsoft's fault?http://www.osnews.com/thread?523730
http://www.osnews.com/thread?523730The problem for OEM is that to be recognized and stay relevant you need to somehow differentiate. And what is the easiest way to do that? Software layers modifications. Their thinking is simple: people acquainted with some added features may stick to them and teach others to do so too. Their failing point is that most of the things they modify/add is crap.

Probably would be wiser to invest more on build quality and services around the device but, guess what, few of them have the resources to do that and some that have are afraid because the bigger risk associated. These are precisely the Apple strong points. Also, they would compete with their front vendors, the telcos and ISP. Not an easy task if you are not that big.

So, really, if you are doing hardware and is not Apple, Samsung or perhaps some 3 to 4 others more, you do not have that much choice.Mon, 25 Jun 2012 12:13:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (acobar)CommentsRE[3]: Microsoft's fault?http://www.osnews.com/thread?523733
http://www.osnews.com/thread?523733It is possible to differentiate through hardware quality and software stability though.

Until Nokia got Elop'd and fell into software madness, I used to recommend their phones for their sturdiness and the good stability/feature set equilibrium provided by s40 and Symbian for the price. Similarly, I strongly suggest friends not to buy Acer laptops due to their horrible build quality.Edited 2012-06-25 12:24 UTCMon, 25 Jun 2012 12:24:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (Neolander)CommentsRE: Back to the old days.http://www.osnews.com/thread?523735
http://www.osnews.com/thread?523735I could only give you a +1, I'd rather give you a +10. I too miss the time when a computer was a complete product of hardware and software. It gave it a personality and it made them all different and interesting.Mon, 25 Jun 2012 12:51:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (MOS6510)CommentsRE[4]: Microsoft's fault?http://www.osnews.com/thread?523742
http://www.osnews.com/thread?523742Same here about Nokia. I really have a hard time to try to understand companies that try to bring someone from outside to sort out their problems, seeing them like a savior. When they bring expertise on distribution/business relations or about new technologies is one thing, but what did Elop (and many others like him on other companies) brought? Nothing! They try to "revolutionize", wasting valuable efforts on a crisis moment.

You don't get too big a company just doing stupid things, even thought big companies do stupid things, but unlike most of us, as long as the stupid thing they did is not insane, or that the bleeding is not related to a huge technology shift, they will have the time to adapt. Nokia could do that, they had market presence, business relationship and expertise on the field. They could have improved their mix of offerings on service and options and what they did? The most dumb movement I ever saw on any gigantic company with their market presence.Mon, 25 Jun 2012 13:19:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (acobar)CommentsRE[2]: Its Microsoft's mess.http://www.osnews.com/thread?523760
http://www.osnews.com/thread?523760

Limit yourself to one single OEM per OS, and what you get is Apple

Not really, I remember there was lot of competition back in the 8/16bit days.

Hardware/OS vendor A screws you? Then move to other platform.

On the days most applications were coded in Assembly there was more portable content between systems than nowadays.Mon, 25 Jun 2012 16:06:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (moondevil)CommentsComment by shmerlhttp://www.osnews.com/thread?523762
http://www.osnews.com/thread?523762

Had Microsoft gotten its act together sooner, we'd have had far better OEM products.

That's questionable. I'd rather see no influence from MS to any OEMs. So far their relations were "lock and control". OEMs were given secret discounts to ship Windows preisntalled, leading to sick monopoly of Windows on the desktop. The picture could be much healthier if there were no leverage on OEMs from MS side.Mon, 25 Jun 2012 16:16:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (shmerl)CommentsRE: Its Microsoft's mess.http://www.osnews.com/thread?523779
http://www.osnews.com/thread?523779Exactly. These are two separate issues.

Certainly Microsoft deserves blame for the problems with Windows over the past decade -- and for dropping the ball on tablets.

But who should we blame for all those crappy notebook computers? The ones with preloaded crapware, awful drivers, terrible thermal design, strange BIOS defaults, crippled BIOSes (VT-X often locked out in the firmware), awful LCDs, barely-working touchpads, etc. etc. etc.?

It got to the point where Windows ran better on a Macbook Air using Boot Camp than it does on the majority of PCs! Boot Camp was a sideshow for Apple -- the drivers aren't exactly the most optimized -- but it also left you with a clean Windows install. That made it better than most OEM PCs.Mon, 25 Jun 2012 18:57:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (tanzam75)CommentsRE: Comment by shmerlhttp://www.osnews.com/thread?523780
http://www.osnews.com/thread?523780The ending of per-PC licensing was a condition of the antitrust settlement.

The antitrust settlement also prohibited Microsoft from controlling what software OEMs may preload on their systems. Hence the crapware epidemic.Mon, 25 Jun 2012 19:01:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (tanzam75)CommentsRE[2]: Comment by shmerlhttp://www.osnews.com/thread?523814
http://www.osnews.com/thread?523814I don't see this in practice. Microsoft was never explicitly prohibited from bundling practice with OEMs. Thus the ridiculous Windows tax issue is present until this day.Tue, 26 Jun 2012 02:00:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (shmerl)CommentsRE: Comment by shmerlhttp://www.osnews.com/thread?523819
http://www.osnews.com/thread?523819

That's questionable. I'd rather see no influence from MS to any OEMs. So far their relations were "lock and control". OEMs were given secret discounts to ship Windows preisntalled, leading to sick monopoly of Windows on the desktop. The picture could be much healthier if there were no leverage on OEMs from MS side. "

Dude, that was like 20 years ago. Time to move on...Tue, 26 Jun 2012 03:30:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (tomcat)CommentsRE[3]: Comment by shmerlhttp://www.osnews.com/thread?523820
http://www.osnews.com/thread?523820

I don't see this in practice. Microsoft was never explicitly prohibited from bundling practice with OEMs. Thus the ridiculous Windows tax issue is present until this day.

Of course not. Antitrust law is intended to restore competition in a given market, not kill it outright. Google and others were permitted to incentivize OEMs to include additional software. So, it made sense that MS was allowed to compete w/o tying incentives to the license cost of the OS.Tue, 26 Jun 2012 03:36:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (tomcat)CommentsRE[2]: Comment by shmerlhttp://www.osnews.com/thread?523829
http://www.osnews.com/thread?523829As I said, what changed since then? The bundling issue is still rampant.Tue, 26 Jun 2012 05:57:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (shmerl)CommentsRE[2]: Microsoft missed the boathttp://www.osnews.com/thread?523845
http://www.osnews.com/thread?523845

...and yet another person who completely disregards the fact that virtually everything - frameworks, stacks, etc. - has been rewritten or massively overhauled between XP and 7, a process that's nearing completion with Windows 8.

Come on guys, I expect comments like this on Engadget, but not here. You guys know better than this.

I think your being unfair, PieterGen's point is about innovation yes MS have done some work, things have been rewritten and improved, but where is the innovation?

Windows 8 is MS's attempt at innovation after a long period of stagnation (not idleness).Tue, 26 Jun 2012 11:18:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (Gone fishing)CommentsRE[2]: Back to the old days.http://www.osnews.com/thread?524011
http://www.osnews.com/thread?524011Also limited sort of by design, with plenty of efforts duplication for not really that much of a difference, easily obsoleted without a clear upgrade path and overall relatively expensive long-term.
You know, just remember the wider picture :pWed, 27 Jun 2012 18:09:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (zima)CommentsRE[3]: Back to the old days.http://www.osnews.com/thread?524012
http://www.osnews.com/thread?524012The C64 sold for 10 years!

Try making a computer now and sell it for even 5 years without upgrading it.Wed, 27 Jun 2012 18:13:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (MOS6510)CommentsRE: Back to the old days.http://www.osnews.com/thread?524013
http://www.osnews.com/thread?524013

I miss what a computer meant back in the 80-90's.

When I talk about an Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari, Apple, etc. The name of the computer is an experience of hardware and software, made to work together.

And you know, there was plenty of shovelware back in the day, too (well, at least it was bloating only floppy or cassette numbers)Wed, 27 Jun 2012 18:13:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (zima)CommentsRE[4]: Back to the old days.http://www.osnews.com/thread?524017
http://www.osnews.com/thread?524017Yeah, and it was almost abusive - at the end, pushing those already long-obsolete 8bit machines (not only Commodore) into places which, well, just didn't have much of any other choice. Powerful and quite inexpensive (if you wanted, if you settled for slightly older but still powerful) hardware - coming from the economies of scale, standardisation, and constant upgrade cycle of PC world - was much nicer, ~decade later.

Well, and the C64 did get at least a cosmetic upgrade halfway through (together with many hw revisions). Overall, we're sort of returning to the dynamics of the 80s, when the same CPU (among 6502, Z80, 68k) was good for a decade - because it largely wasn't the dominating factor in performance and/or was good enough, anyway.
Ywah, we're not setting specs in stone so much - but again, that's a good thing.Edited 2012-06-27 18:27 UTCWed, 27 Jun 2012 18:25:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (zima)CommentsRE[4]: Microsoft's fault?http://www.osnews.com/thread?524019
http://www.osnews.com/thread?524019

It is possible to differentiate through hardware quality and software stability though.

Until Nokia got Elop'd and fell into software madness, I used to recommend their phones for their sturdiness and the good stability/feature set equilibrium provided by s40 and Symbian for the price.

S40 seems better than ever, and being developed further, under Elop? Symbian similarly, so far... (and while this one supposedly has writing on the wall, it should still be good at least for one typical mobile phone lifetime)Wed, 27 Jun 2012 18:42:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (zima)CommentsRE[5]: Microsoft's fault?http://www.osnews.com/thread?524020
http://www.osnews.com/thread?524020Elop brought, and continues to bring, pretty much what Nokia board wanted... (whatever that is, long-term)

That did include an expertise of sorts with one business relation, BTW. And Nokia was visibly stumbling before Elop. And Elop seems to aggressively push further the development of S30 and S40.Wed, 27 Jun 2012 18:47:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (zima)CommentsRE[5]: Back to the old days.http://www.osnews.com/thread?524028
http://www.osnews.com/thread?524028Specs didn't matter much, because they didn't chance I guess.

Developers, who were called programmers back then, knew what the specs were. I think that's a great advantage.

Apple doesn't have many computers in their line-up, but even the same model can differ in memory or processing power. Let alone over a period of 2-3 years. Different hardware, different operating systems.

The C64 didn't change and programmers learned to squeeze everything out of it. And if it ran fine at their end it would at yours.

I have a feeling a lot of coding issues these days are solved with more brute force than clever and efficient tinkering of code. Then again can you spend so much time on things in a world that moves so fast these days.Wed, 27 Jun 2012 19:19:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (MOS6510)CommentsRE[6]: Back to the old days.http://www.osnews.com/thread?524040
http://www.osnews.com/thread?524040

Specs didn't matter much, because they didn't chance I guess.

It was more than not changing. Look at Motorola 68000, a CPU from the turn of 70s/80s, and being introduced in new and different machines for over a decade - starting with workstations, then in home computers of mid-80s, numerous new types of arcade machines and consoles well into late 80s at least; but also with Mac Classic and such, A600, or IIRC new models of one Japanese computer line of early 90s.
Z80 and 6502, from mid-70s - and still some new machines in mid-80s (even a terminator ...later of course also other embedded or portable usages, but those have separate considerations).
Similar largely with PCs in those period - XT or AT class machines remained standard for a long time, and while first 386 were introduced in mid-80s, the AMD386 of early 90s was still a big success.

The CPU hardly even featured in ~marketing, other things seemed to be bigger considerations for a long time, more limiting factors - like the amounts of memory, or small storage and slow I/O.
Then those became less of an issue, and we really found some usage for more CPU power in mid-90s, so the race was on.
Now it's more about the GPU and power consumption, it seems (though we have leftovers of the 90s/00s race, in marketing)

Yeah, the specs of year-on-year models differ, but that's beside the point (and a good thing) - half-decade old machines are still quite good enough in most cases.
And BTW, also probably in many "I require high speed" cases - I did a sort of ABX test on such buddy of mine (also into overclocking, tweaking parameters), with halving the speed of his CPU ...and in normal usage he clearly couldn't tell when the CPU ran at full speed and when at half, his guesses were no better than chance.

The C64 didn't change and programmers learned to squeeze everything out of it. And if it ran fine at their end it would at yours.
I have a feeling a lot of coding issues these days are solved with more brute force than clever and efficient tinkering of code.

Not really... what mostly happened is that games looked virtually the same, were quite static for a long time.
And it wasn't quite that portable - most notably, NTSC and PAL models were often essentially incompatible; C64 demoscene is almost a PAL-only phenomena. And while, IIRC, C64 didn't have incompatibilities between revisions (or few), this was a problem with Spectrum lineage at least.

Also, most of past games were quite dreadful gameplay-wise, and apps not that good; shovelware - so what if it was optimised? It's a good thing when app devs can focus more on user experience, when game devs don't have to focus on low-level tinkering, that's not what games are about.

But, where it matters, we do push for heavy optimisations - mplayer for example made a big progress in performance over the years. Providers of game engines also have this in mind.Wed, 27 Jun 2012 20:57:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (zima)CommentsRE[3]: Comment by shmerlhttp://www.osnews.com/thread?524062
http://www.osnews.com/thread?524062

As I said, what changed since then? The bundling issue is still rampant.

Bundling isn't an issue. Other ISVs are free (and do) work with OEMs to get their software on machines that the OEMs sell. Why do you think there are so many complaints about "crapware" or "bloatware" shipping with new machines?Thu, 28 Jun 2012 00:56:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (tomcat)CommentsRE[5]: Microsoft's fault?http://www.osnews.com/thread?524094
http://www.osnews.com/thread?524094Oh, I'm pretty sure that Nokia phones are still good, I just don't want to fund their current practices unless all of the alternatives would really horribly suck.

I want Nokia's financial health to go bad enough that they will have to get themselves some common sense, start firing the people who are actually responsible for the current disaster instead of dumping fine employees from the bottom of the hierarchy, and work on some great new thing instead of rehashing the same old stuff and being Microsoft's bitch. Then they can count me as a potential customer again.Edited 2012-06-28 07:46 UTCThu, 28 Jun 2012 07:36:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (Neolander)CommentsRE[6]: Microsoft's fault?http://www.osnews.com/thread?524179
http://www.osnews.com/thread?524179But wouldn't buying into their product lines that you do like, S40 or Symbian, be propping up the "preferable" Nokia practices? :p

Again, S40 (or even Symbian...) doesn't appear to be merely "still good" - it seems better than ever under Elop, and dynamically developed ( http://www.developer.nokia.com/Devices/Device_specifications/?filte... particularly Asha 305 and the like) - in contrast to its relative stagnation for half a decade or so before Elop, when they were really rehashing the same old stuff (and when you were recommending Nokia phones, I guess); when also phones like Samsung Corby, Star or LG Cookie - not only so called "smartphones" - stole the momentum and spotlight, which Nokia has a hard time recovering.

And yeah, if people will just ignore them even when Nokia is getting its act together here and there... Meanwhile, the board and major shareholders apparently want present Nokia practices (whatever the long-term goal is, particularly with smartphone divisions).

BTW those lowly employees, largely in manufacturing - we decided we don't want them in ~Western fabs, by refusing to pay more for something similar or expecting the same price as for consumer toys manufactured in East Asian factories (hence pushing profit margins, valuations, and so on down).
Also, the lay-offs were announced together with news of some managerial shake-up ( http://press.nokia.com/2012/06/14/nokia-sharpens-strategy-and-provi... ), but that didn't seem to be reported...Thu, 28 Jun 2012 13:29:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (zima)CommentsRE[7]: Microsoft's fault?http://www.osnews.com/thread?524210
http://www.osnews.com/thread?524210I do not think that solely buying and recommending the products that I like would be enough.

As far as I can tell, a functional tech company works due to a fragile equilibrium between the interests of employees, executives, customers, and shareholders. In the case of Nokia, it seems that due to a problem on the executive side in the Symbian days, financial problems have appeared, which has in turn caused shareholders to go crazy and suddenly decide that their big piles of cash somehow gave them miraculous insight on how to lead a tech company. This in turn led to the arrival of Elop and his pawns, who don't give a crap about Nokia but saw a golden opportunity for Microsoft to finally to get the dedicated OEM that they desperately needed for WP7. So these guys are now desperately trying to make this OS relevant on the phone market by associating it with the name and hardware of a reknown phone company (Nokia) and killing all possible competition inside of that company (Symbian, Maemo, Meego, Meltemi...).

The problem is, this won't work. WP7 tries to compete with iOS and Android without the brand image and centralized control of Apple or the hardware diversity of Android. It is too little and too late, in short it is doomed to fail unless WP8 magically changes the game. If that was not enough, this OS is the worst possible choice for Nokia, a company which based its success on its ability to manufacture phones for everyone's needs instead of half a dozen of lookalike slabs.

Even the management is aware of this, but to keep WP7 in focus, they couldn't find a better idea than to take a simple feature phone OS (s40) and feature-bloat it until it becomes an okay replacement for Symbian. Now, I don't know how s40 works on the inside, but I'm pretty sure that to make it work on super-low-end hardware, some serious security/cleanness compromises had to be made : running everything in kernel mode, putting all processes in a single address space, maybe some cooperative multitasking even... So I expect that at some point, when Nokia tries to bring it into the "app" game, the whole thing will blow up in a spectacular explosion of mobile malware. But only time will tell.

Meanwhile, with that vision of things in mind, it makes no sense to just buy s40 hardware as if nothing happened. This would bring Nokia's revenue up, and thus validate Elop's suicidal strategy. Shareholders would in turn be happy, and gain what looks like factual evidence that their managerial strategy is worth anything. What should happen instead is a financial disaster : shareholders would get an instant lesson of tech company management (never trust Microsoft), fire Elop, and either decide to get some more lessons before forgetting their purely financial role or sink the company further up to the point where employees and management take back Nokia's financial control.

A few years ago, Nokia were indeed a bit resting on their past successes because they could : their low- and mid-end phones were still simply better than everyone else's (I mean, Samsung and LG have never been able to achieve Nokia-like build quality, and only got better than Nokia on the software front thanks to Google's help). But they were still trying to innovate with stuff like Maemo and Qt. By carefully fixing the issues of the Symbian team, they could have succeeded and ended up with something pretty awesome. Now, it's just Windows or nothing, which is hardly exciting.Edited 2012-06-28 16:32 UTCThu, 28 Jun 2012 16:28:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (Neolander)CommentsRE[8]: Microsoft's fault?http://www.osnews.com/thread?524222
http://www.osnews.com/thread?524222

I do not think that solely buying and recommending the products that I like would be enough.
[...]
Meanwhile, with that vision of things in mind, it makes no sense to just buy s40 hardware as if nothing happened.

Is there anything except product sales to which companies really respond? So, we have here possible difference (in message) between all products faltering, and only some doing so.
What you seem to advocate only leads to a point of no return, me thinks.

Meanwhile, what happened is that S40 is, again, better than ever...

And really, let's not present the negatives in Nokia as coming from Elop (he was brought specifically to execute this WP7 shift) or, especially, as having nothing to do with "fine employees from the bottom of the hierarchy".
At the least there seemed to be a sort of infighting between several divisions, projects at Nokia (in which those fine employees would surely also be involved); slowing progress and likely leading to huge delays in Maemo (hence Meego), probably also Symbian, in a way (it was seen as so nice for so long... maybe not only executive side of Symbian was bad).
Meltemi - yeah, could be nice I guess, but probably the last thing Nokia needs now is more fragmentation of efforts by another internal platform; lower-end WP handsets should be soon where Meltemi would be around its premiÃ¨re.

I have sort of the opposite impression of S40 vs Symbian - it seems like the latter became largely unmaintainable some time ago. In contrast, S40 might be a lean codebase, easier to build upon.
And it's NOT "super-low-end hardware" - I mean, the hardware shipping S40 now is often more powerful than quite recent Symbian phones, and not terribly far from lowly WP hardware, so that's not really the overruling consideration (for example http://www.developer.nokia.com/Devices/Device_specifications/Asha_3... 1 GHz and 128 MiB of RAM) - plus j2me apps (oh yeah, there are apps) don't require that much memory, likewise Opera Mini or similar browser.

A few years ago, Nokia were indeed a bit resting on their past successes because they could : their low- and mid-end phones were still simply better than everyone else's (I mean, Samsung and LG have never been able to achieve Nokia-like build quality, and only got better than Nokia on the software front thanks to Google's help)

I don't know... SE "feature phones" tended to offer more for the price (didn't help them BTW). The quality of LG or Samsung also doesn't seem to be that much of an issue for a while (I mean, Samsung probably wouldn't surpass Nokia in low-end phones otherwise - people getting them care about durability; this shift in their buying preference was probably based on observations that Samsung is OK after all, for those few who got them earlier)

And you still overlook how "a few years ago" LG Cookie and Samsung Star or Corby (their own software BTW) took large part of the traditional S40 market by storm - to which Nokia basically failed to respond. From what I saw at my place, many people were either enticed by and upgrading mostly to such nice inexpensive touchscreen novelties ...or not bothering to upgrade (what for, when the new S40 is just like the old S40? And as for the Symbian option, I actually witnessed how an operator salesman was recommending against it to somebody who, he surmised, would be lost in it; and he was right)Thu, 28 Jun 2012 17:41:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (zima)CommentsRE[9]: Microsoft's fault?http://www.osnews.com/thread?524228
http://www.osnews.com/thread?524228Re S40 and Symbian :

Three years ago, I have bought a nice razor-thin phone running S40 for around 40â¬ (unsubsided). That was about half the price of the next cheapest phone in the shop, and more generally of most phones in France. The hardware specs of that thing looked, as could be expected, like something from a decade ago. That's what I was thinking of when saying that s40 scales down to the ultra-low-end.

I strongly doubt that Nokia managed to make an OS that runs well on this kind of chip without facing some serious performance vs cleanness design compromise. As far as I know, S40 does not even need an MMU to run, which means that all S40 software works in a single address space, like in the C64 and Amiga days. So although Nokia can run this OS on modern phones if they want, they will need to rewrite it in depth if they want to make it on par with modern phone OSs. This is not impossible, after all Symbian's kernel successfully underwent such a rewrite once, but it is tricky to achieve in a period of financial difficulties.

Meanwhile, Symbian has been designed for fast phones from the ground up. It relies on such abstractions and functionality as user mode software, MMUs, and processes, to bring all the security and reliability that one would expect from a modern OS. Its microkernel internals and socket abstractions follow one of the cleanest structures of the last century, while still optimizing for such mobile-specific concerns as power management. It had capability-based security back when most OSs were still letting all software throw random stuff at serial ports... And so on.

As far as I know, there were no issues with Symbian's core design. It had nothing to envy from its Unix and WinCE-based rivals. The problems rather used to stem, from what I could gather here and there, from two major issues : one technical one (some higher-level layers sucked, in particular the UI ones, which had to be rewritten in order to support touch, and the obscure API, but this later problem was solved with Qt), and one human one (due to bad management, the Symbian team was apparently left free to do what it want, instead of having a clear-cut schedule focusing on the company's priorities, and even harmed the work of other team such as the Maemo one).

Re Nokia competitors:

Indeed, I've also seen and heard lots of good things about SE phones during those days. My current phone is from them, and I can also say that it's pretty good. At the time, their handsets mostly had the reputation of being less robust, but having a better feature set for the price. I guess it's a Nordic thing to build quality phones at low price

WRT Samsung and LG... I honestly don't know why people buy their lower-end stuff. Judging from my experience of their phones and that of others around me, it seems that they make a living of implementing "cool" features that look great on a spec list (capacitive keys, touchscreens...) at a very low price by compromising on build quality or software polish. I've seen lots of praise about their high-end stuff, so it's not that they do not have skilled engineers or something, just that they have a really bad sense of priorities (quantity over quality)...

These Cookie and Corby phones that you mention were, in my opinion, perfectly illustrative of how these guys make phones. Screens were horribly unresponsive and constantly lost calibration, you had to apply something like 10 bars of pressure with your finger before scrolling would work semi-properly, everything was laggy... It was just an example of how bad touchscreens could get on phones, before the capacitive generation revealed their more subtle issues...

I can also recommend LG's KS360 as a perfect example of how bad LG's stuff can get when they try to make it cheap. As always with LG and Samsung, it sounded awesome on paper : full qwerty slider, capacitive touchscreen, unbeatable pricing... And then you own the phone, and you realize that the touchscreen is only used for dialing phone numbers, that everything is laggy (see a pattern there ?), and that the software is so buggy that the phone can even fail to properly empty its SMS inbox when asked to do so.

In my opinion, the fact that S40 phone owners didn't constantly upgrade their phones may simply be an illustration of their quality : when your stuff works well and when you do not care about the latest shiny spec before implementation is stabilized, you don't feel a need to constantly switch from one model to another and undergo the pain of learning over and over again.Thu, 28 Jun 2012 19:16:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (Neolander)CommentsRE[9]: Microsoft's fault?http://www.osnews.com/thread?524232
http://www.osnews.com/thread?524232P.S : Do not hesitate to point out if you think that I'm missing some important points in your posts, as you did before. My main computer is currently undergoing hardware repairs, so I'm writing these replies on a cellphone, which takes much patience and asks a lot from my memorization skills. It is all too easy to miss out stuff when you can't see everything at the same time.Thu, 28 Jun 2012 19:54:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (Neolander)CommentsRE[10]: Microsoft's fault?http://www.osnews.com/thread?524860
http://www.osnews.com/thread?524860Ah, you saw it from a ~"full range of hw dictating sw" perspective (probably because of toying with your own OS, I guess? :p ) - while I saw it from market segmentation side.

But you know... when looking at how each runs, the supposed limited architecture of S40 doesn't seem to be a problem - it always appeared much more stable and snappy than Symbian to me. Again, plenty of apps on S40 already, with gargantuan installed base, no apparent ill effects.
It's like, on the other side of it - yeah, Symbian always ran native software and had full multitasking, while WP7 falls on both counts (user-side) ...so? The latter seems much nicer, overall.

Also, from what I heard, Symbian was very laborious when integrating with new models - perhaps also saying something about the state of its codebase*. A fairly old OS, made not really with speedy hardware in mind - but, AFAIK, with design choices focusing on things which are hardly a concern now (like low memory). And its security... I don't know, IIRC it was for a long time the only mobile OS with any notable malware spread reported - before it was simply DRM'ed to run only signed binaries.

* hm, it was open sourced at some point - the original project is gone (lack of any enthusiasm with that one was also telling), but code dumps are around, check it out?

I see touch S40 as pushing it just a bit higher, because WP7 will be pushed lower (there are some rumours about even less expensive handsets than 610), so they'll almost touch (puns and all ) - there's really hardly place for Symbian there in the middle, it only dilutes the efforts.
Within the strategy that Nokia chose (for better or worse), having only 3 OS makes more sense... (yes, three - and BTW, S30 is apparently pushed up a bit, I wonder if they'll reintroduce GPRS and j2me in it, or if that will be just for "S40 light")
Generally - look what happens with WebOS, RIM - there really doesn't seem to be place for internal efforts of not-really-software companies.
There is possibly even barely any place for Windows Phone. But, if there's any chance of a major player outside of iOS and Android, that's most likely from MS.

WRT Samsung and LG... and cool features - yeah, partly, I once had the displeasure of trying out / configuring an LG model with two capacitive keys, sold to its owner under "it has touch!" slogan. But then, a) such buttons are horrible everywhere and i can't stand the trend of them b) Nokia had plenty of superfluous, even frivolous products too, riding on ""cool" features that look great on a spec list" and falling into "a really bad sense of priorities (quantity over quality)" - indeed, that's largely been the downfall of Nokia.

Though, from the Cookie users I had contact with, their owners were quite pleased with those little phones.
Also, again, there was clearly a gradual shift, over the last few years, from Nokia to Samsung in entry-level phones / developing world (and in those places, word-of-mouth matters greatly), that's chiefly why Samsung overtook Nokia as #1 maker, with number of units sold - I have a hard time believing that so many millions of people would choose inferior like that products.

And with many S40 owners stopping upgrades at some point (from what I saw, it wasn't always like that, it happened in 2-4 years ago time frame) - it looked more as if those people realised that Nokia and/or carriers were scamming them into useless upgrades previously.
They were mostly using their phones just for calls and SMS anyway ...an S30 handset is enough for that, S20 also (I believe I stumbled once on Nokia 3310 platform being described as such)Mon, 02 Jul 2012 23:31:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (zima)Comments